Professional Curiosity

What is professional curiosity?

Professional curiosity is an important part of keeping children safe. Professional curiosity is when a practitioner explores and proactively tries to understand what is happening within a family rather than making assumptions or taking a single source of information and accepting it at face value. 

Professional curiosity involves using your skills and knowledge to recognise when there may be a need to investigate a situation further. It can require practitioners to think ‘outside the box’, beyond their usual professional role, and consider families’ circumstances holistically. Curious professionals engage with individuals and families through visits, conversations, observations and asking relevant questions to gather historical and current information.

It is a combination of looking, listening, asking, direct questions, checking out and reflecting on information received. It means: 

• not taking a single source of information and accepting it at face value
• testing your professional hypothesis and not making assumptions 
• triangulating information from different sources to gain a better understanding of individuals and family functioning 
• getting an understanding of individuals’ and families’ past history which in turn, may help you think about what may happen in the future
• obtaining multiple sources of information and not accepting a single set of details you are given at face value
• having an awareness of your own personal bias and how that affects how you see those you are working with 
• being respectively nosey

Why is it important? 

Professional curiosity is an essential part of safeguarding. Nurturing professional curiosity is a fundamental aspect of working together to keep children and young people safe.

A lack of professional curiosity can lead to:

• missed opportunities to identify less obvious indicators of vulnerability or significant harm
• assumptions made in assessments of needs and risk which are incorrect and lead to wrong intervention for individuals and families
• the presenting issues are dealt with in isolation

Professionals asking questions and seeking explanation from parents/carers is something to be valued; healthy challenge is good and can provide assurance that your assessment of the situation is accurate.

A high reliance by professionals on self-reports provided by parents/carers can bring significant risks of proceeding on false information.

Good information sharing, supervision and open discussion at key decision-making meetings to ‘check and test’ information can be crucial in ensuring this does not happen.

Being professionally curious is not always easy and straight forward:

• Sometimes parents may demonstrate disguised compliance, this is when parents or carers appear to co-operate with agencies to avoid raising suspicions and allay concerns.
• Families may appear to engage with professionals but are not able or willing to change as a result of an intervention.
• Some families are fearful of being open and honest about family dynamics or circumstances

 Look

• Is there anything about what you see when you meet with this child/young person/family which prompts questions or makes you feel uneasy?
• Are you observing any behaviour which is indicative of abuse or neglect?
• Does what you see support or contradict what you’re being told?

Listen 

• Are you being told anything which needs to be clarified further?
• Are you concerned about what you hear family members say to each other?
• Is someone in this family trying to tell you something but is finding it difficult to express themselves? If so, how can you help them to do so?

Ask 

Are there direct questions you could ask when you meet this child/young person /family which will provide more information about the vulnerability of individual family members?

Here are some examples:

• Who are the professionals working with your family?
• What is it like to be (name) living in this family/household?
• What is a typical day like for you?
• Who is this with you at this appointment?
• Who is living with you?
• Why are you not at school?
• What is the first thing you think of when you get up in the morning and/or the last thing you think of before you go to sleep?
• When were you last happy?
• Do you feel safe?
• What do you look forward to?
• Are there people who regularly visit your home apart from those who live there?
• Are you worried about anything?

Check Out 

• Are other professionals involved?
• Have other professionals seen the same as you?
• Are professionals being told the same or different things?
• Are others concerned? If so, what action has been taken so far and is there anything else which should or could be done by you or anyone else?